BITE user comments - EarlOfEmsworth
Comments by EarlOfEmsworth
While it's certainly endearingly quaint to sit at school desks while quaffing a superb but expensive pint, such seating arrangements may not to be everyone's taste, not least because the seats are immovable. Most of the place is given over to food, so for drinking it's a desk in the bar area if one's free, or stand. There's a handful of benches outside at the back, with pleasant views of the residents' car park, doubtless quite pleasant nevertheless if the weather's suitable. Don't expect to see much change from a tenner if you ask for a pint and a large glass of wine.
On our visit (5pm Sunday), the staff were more attractive than useful, and it took an age to get served. The food is excellent but pretentious (served, for instance, not on plates but on wooden chopping board affairs), and rather overpriced: they seem to be aiming at the proper restaurant market (you can easily spend £15 or more on a main course), but you can't get away from it being a glorified pub.
To fit in with the rest of the clientele, you may wish to avail yourself of an old school tie and sports jacket. Dogs are welcome. Overall, good for a special occasion meal, and worth a visit for a pint, but I wouldn't make it a regular casual venue. Wetherspoons it ain't -- in both good and bad ways.
8 May 2013 13:01
Friday 10 August, later evening. Having heard good things about The Tump, I went in with my daughter for a pint and some food. Entering into what we found to be a raucous bar area, we stood there looking hopefully for a member of staff, while a gaggle of loud and lumpen locals were served ahead of us by the one person apparently in attendance. We stood, and stood, unable to attract any attention. If the bar girl did see us, we must have been of less interest than the jokes of her mates and the sport on the big-screen TV.
"Oh well", I said, "let's try the restaurant bit." So we weaved through the bar, down some stairs which a sign indicated led to the restaurant. Leaving the noise behind, a doorway with a handful more stairs down brought us out into a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged dining room, containing maybe twenty dark wood tables laid out with cutlery and wine glasses. Just one of these was occupied, by a late-middle aged couple apparently on their dessert course. They did not look up. The silence here was as eerily deafening as the bar had been literally.
So we waited. And waited. I coughed politely.
Nobody appeared, even to check on the couple -- who, I now realise, might in fact have been stuffed and mounted, just to make the place look less deserted (on a Friday night, remember). That would fit right in with the atmosphere.
I tentatively moved towards the other entrance, presumably to the kitchen; a solitary balloon proclaiming 'Happy 50th Birthday' floated gently away across the floor at my passing. My peering into this brighter area revealed no living human. I cleared my throat again, to no avail. "Excuse me!" I called in that quiet way one might in a library (a library would have been noisier).
Nothing. Wait.
A little louder: "Anyone home?"
Silence. Wait.
"Shop!"
As if by magic, no shopkeeper appeared.
We left.
So I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about the quality of the beer or the food.
23 Aug 2012 15:23
15 July 2012. Sunday late lunchtime, with my daughter (13). It's an attractive place, both inside and out. Although it wasn't overly busy, it took an age to get served with some drinks. Pint of Ringwood 49er, and a large coke. "That's seven pounds forty." Cough, splutter. The coke -- not from a bottle but just the usual squirty dispenser -- was �3.65. Fortunately I was able to put it on a tab. Back to the table. The 49er was lovely. So, to choose some the food.
The range on offer wasn't exactly extensive, and only the Sunday Roast (beef, lamb, chicken, pork, nut) was under a tenner (at �9.95). (There was a small chalkboard on the bar informing me what the soup, pie and curry of the day were, but not how much.) Call me old fashioned, but I begrudge paying evening meal prices for lunch, so two roast beef it was. Oh well, it'd better be good, I thought.
Back to the bar. When after another age the girl finally got to me again -- poor love was rushed off her feet with one other customer -- I was redirected to the food hatch area of the bar about six foot away round the corner (which to be fair had a clear sign... above it, and it was hidden from where we were). Another wait for a different girl to show up and take our order. She, however, couldn't do me another pint, so back to the main bar I went for a bit more standing around.
Finally seated, we waited for the food. And waited. This was, remember, the tail end of a Sunday lunchtime, we were ordering a standard Sunday roast, and the place wasn't heaving. How long to put some beef on a plate? (I estimate that, including my hanging around at the bar, the answer is 'just over half an hour'.)
Delivered by a waitress who was completely on autopilot (or just plain vacant), the food finally arrived, and we could see where our money went. On the place's pretension. Large white square plate, food decorated with a sprig of flat leaf parsley. Two slices of beef, two soggy roast potatoes (well, two pieces -- between us, I think we got a whole potato). And, in a novel twist on the traditional Sunday roast beef, there was also a pork chipolata and small slabs of two types of stuffing -- sage and onion, and something sausage-meat-ish. Balanced precariously on top was a plate-dominating, dried-up Yorkshire pudding, which the small puddle of gravy on the meat couldn't hope to moisten. More veg arrived in a separate boat-like dish: mashed swede, broccoli, carrot and new potatoes, all of which were hot and apparently fresh.
It was all reasonably tasty, but nothing to write home about; the beef, while far from tender, did at least yield to firm use of the blunt knife. But if the meal needs further review, I'll mention that my daughter is an absolute fiend for roast potatoes, regularly munching down what looks like her body weight in them at home. She left one of her two pieces.
Since nobody asked if everything was okay, the opportunity for more desperately needed gravy never arose. I suppose I could have waited at the bar...
The loos, surprisingly for a fair sized establishment, were extremely 'compact and bijou', and lacked hot water.
So in short: highly disappointing. Good beer, but mediocre overpriced food and lackadaisical service. If you fancy an ale, go for it. For any other reason, I'd try somewhere -- anywhere -- else.
3/10, for the well-kept beer.
18 Jul 2012 10:45
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The Hut (Beefeater), Chandlers Ford
It's a Beefeater restaurant. They do have beer, and it seems well kept 'considering', but it's not really the place's point.
2/10 as a pub, pleasant enough so 6/10 as an eatery.
8 May 2013 13:12